Lapp.” He had been thinking about her lately. She was on his mind far too often. Perhaps that was why he imagined he saw her.
Dale glanced his way. “You mean Leroy Lapp’s daughter? I thought she was in Florida. Boy, that would be a great place to live during the winter, wouldn’t it? Have you ever been there?”
“Nee.” Jesse was sorry he’d said anything. Most of the three-hour drive had been made in silence, the way Jesse liked it, but only after Dale tired of Jesse’s one-word answers to his almost endless chatter.
Dale accelerated. The ancient truck’s gears grated when he shifted. “It could be that she’s on her way home for a visit. The bus station in Cleary is just down the block from that corner.”
“Maybe.”
Dale shook his head. “Nah. Leroy would’ve mentioned something if she was coming home. That girl is the apple of his eye. She was always easy on the eyes if you ask me. Too bad she got baptized before I had the chance to ask her out.”
Jesse scowled at Dale. The man wasn’t Amish, but he worked for an Amish bishop. “If you want to keep delivering sheds and supplies for Bishop Schultz, you’d better not let him hear such talk.” It was the longest comment Jesse had ever made to the man.
Dale’s stunned expression proved he got the point. “I meant no disrespect, Jesse. I like Gemma. You know how Leroy is always rattling on about her.”
Jesse leaned his head back and stared out the window at the homes and small businesses of Cleary, Maine, flashing past. He had eavesdropped on Leroy’s conversations about Gemma a few times. He knew about her job in Pinecrest at a pie shop, about the large number of friends she was making among the Englisch and Amish folks, and how much she loved the ocean, but he had never asked about her himself.
Bishop Elmer Schultz—like most of the men in their community, including Jesse—had a second occupation, in addition to being a potato farmer. The bishop owned a small business that made storage sheds in various sizes. Jesse had worked for him since coming to Maine three years ago when the community of New Covenant was first founded.
Starting a new Amish colony anywhere was filled with challenges, but the rugged country of northern Maine had its own unique trials. Here, more than anywhere, a man had to depend on the people around him in times of trouble. There was no certainty that the community founded by Elijah Troyer could survive. Elijah had passed away two years ago. Nine of the original ten families remained and more had come the past summer.
The move to New Covenant, Maine, may have been a difficult choice for some of the families in the community, but not for Jesse. He had jumped at the chance. In Maine he didn’t have to hang his head because he wasn’t as smart as some or because he was bigger than everyone else. In Ohio he’d been known as Jesse the Ox since his school days.
The child of a single mother, he’d been orphaned at thirteen. He quit school and became a hired man with no hope of owning his own land until he answered an ad in the Amish newspaper seeking hardy souls willing to settle in northern Maine and offering a small parcel of land as an incentive. The beautiful scenery of Maine and plenty of hard work soon overshadowed Jesse’s memories of his unhappy early years. Until Gemma Lapp managed to reopen those old wounds with her sharp tongue.
He could still see her standing with her arms crossed and her face flaming red as she sputtered, “Jesse Crump, you’re as big as an ox and dumber than a post.”
All because he had rebuffed her offer of marriage.
She had barely been twenty-one at the time, not old enough to know what love was, but she’d taken the notion that she was in love with him. He’d suffered through weeks of her attempts to gain his affection. She tried everything from fresh-baked pies delivered to him at work, letters full of her newfound love, even getting her father to hire him to do handiwork on their farm, where she was always close by, chatting about how wonderful it would be to marry and have children.
He was almost eight years her senior and not interested in settling down until he had enough land to support a family. Her proposal wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been alone, but they hadn’t been. A half dozen people overheard her offer, his pointed rejection and her scathing words in reply.
The snickers, taunts and jeers that had made his school years and young-adult life miserable were only in his head but in that moment, Gemma had unlocked feelings of inferiority he had lived with for years and worked hard to overcome. If she saw him that way, surely others did too.
He kept to himself after that day, hoping her remarks would be forgotten, but they stayed stuck in his head, even though no one else echoed them. He strove to avoid being anywhere near Gemma for the next six months. Big as an ox and dumber than a post. It wasn’t until she left New Covenant that he stopped hearing her words. In spite of her comment, he hadn’t disliked Gemma. She was loyal to her friends. She was a hard worker. She had a good sense of humor, but she was also headstrong and willful.
It had been nearly a year and a half since the embarrassing incident. He thought he’d put it out of his mind, but it seemed he hadn’t.
Gemma’s father, Leroy Lapp, worked with Jesse at the bishop’s business. Leroy had recently been chosen to become the community’s second minister. The influx of six new families in the spring had swelled the congregation, making it more than Bishop Schultz and his first minister, Samuel Yoder, could manage. Especially now that plans were underway to start their own Amish school.
“Maybe she’s making a surprise visit,” Dale said when the silence stretched too long to suit him.
“Maybe you could drive faster. It’s almost noon.”
“What’s your hurry? We’ve got all day.”
“I’ve got to get back before the bank closes. I need to get a cashier’s check for the earnest money the auction company requires I put up before I can bid on the property I’ve got my eye on. They want ten thousand dollars to prove I can afford the land.”
“Oh, right. The land auction. I almost forgot about that.” Dale shot Jesse a sheepish glance and focused his attention on the road.
The farm Jesse owned was small, but he had plans to expand. The money he’d made building sheds over the last few years would help pay for more land. He had his eye on eighty acres that bordered his property to the west. It was fertile land ready for planting in the spring. He couldn’t ask for a better piece of property. It was going up for auction the day after tomorrow. The auction company required earnest money in the form of a cashier’s check or cash before anyone was allowed to bid and Jesse wasn’t about to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime.
He gazed out the passenger’s-side window at the farms that lined the highway, interspersed with heavy forests already covered with the first snow of winter. His thoughts drifted from the land he intended to purchase back to Gemma. If Gemma did come to visit her family in northern Maine, it wouldn’t be in the middle of November. Gemma didn’t like the snow. To hear her tell it, she didn’t like much of anything about Maine.
He was sure his name topped the list of things she disliked most about the North Country.
* * *
“There won’t be another bus going that way until the day after tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” Gemma stared at the agent behind the counter in stunned disbelief.
The
